Why it matters: The deal with Samsung isn’t technically a semi-custom strategy as Samsung will simply be licensing IP and making their own chips, not relying on AMD for the actual hardware. It will have the same overall net effect, however – AMD graphics technology featured in yet another industry and another stream of revenue for the chipmaker.
AMD and Samsung on Monday announced a multi-year strategic partnership in which Samsung will license AMD graphics IP for use in mobile applications including smartphones.
The partnership will specifically see AMD lend its recently announced RDNA graphics architecture to the South Korean tech giant. The RDNA architecture is expected to deliver improved performance, power and memory efficiency in a smaller package – ideal for the tight confines of mobile devices.
AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su said adoption of their Radeon graphics technologies across the PC, game console, cloud and HPC markets has grown significantly and they are thrilled to now partner with industry leader Samsung to accelerate graphics innovation in the mobile market.
Indeed, AMD has branched out in recent years and found success outside of the PC gaming market with its semi-custom strategy. Both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles feature custom AMD processors and Google’s upcoming Stadia cloud-based gaming platform is also said to be powered by AMD graphics.
Inyup Kang, president of Samsung Electronics’ S.LSI Business, said their partnership with AMD will allow them to bring groundbreaking graphics products and solutions to market for tomorrow’s mobile applications.
Financial details of the partnership aren’t being made public just yet (more details are expected in AMD’s second quarter earnings report) although the company did say it expects to receive “hundreds of millions of dollars over the lifetime of the agreement.”
Image credit: Tom's Hardware, Samsung Galaxy s10 by megaflopp
https://www.techspot.com/news/80347-samsung-bringing-amd-rdna-graphics-smartphones.html
